SUBJECT – URBAN DESIGN ASSIGNMENT ASSIGNMENT NO. – 02 PROFESOR – AR.M VINOD GANESH
UTOPIAN URBAN CONCEPTS OF LE COUBUSIER TERM PAPER
SARANYA GOGULA – 18011AA076 SRINIVAS VEMAGIRI – 18011AA081
Urban Design (Elective-3)- Utopian urban concepts of Le Corbusier
TERM PAPER
ABSTRACT This term paper aims at understanding the birth of utopian city concepts. It focuses on the impact that Le corbusier has had on this topic and further dwells into the exploration of these spaces , with details regarding his spatial planning which is a self-instrument of discovery , transformation and new ideas.
INTRODUCTION For millennia, city builders have dreamt that with the right combination of streets and structures, they can create a place that brings humanity to a higher plane. In a sense, all city planners share this dream. But when planners envision a city that is radically different from every existing location, perhaps even a city that can't be built given current technologies or legal infrastructure, then we can call that city a utopia. UTOPIAN CONCEPT Coined by Thomas More in 1516, the word “utopia” stems from the Greek outopos—which means “no place” or “nowhere”—but also refers to eu-topos, meaning “a good place.” The very origins of the word therefore reflect the question of whether a good or perfect place can ever exist. Throughout history, religious reformers and visionary starchitects alike have attempted to answer that question by establishing spiritual communes and crafting masterplans for cities of the future.
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Urban Design (Elective-3)- Utopian urban concepts of Le Corbusier
TERM PAPER
In the early 1900s, not long after Ebenezer Howard realized his first Garden Cities, another designer put forward his own solution to the woes of urban life. French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier, born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, saw the machine age as a chance to remake society and improve the lives of all. Corbu’s ideas, which reached their ultimate form with the Radiant City, proposed nothing less than the complete destruction and replacement of cities with his concept of perfect, ordered environments. To understand where Corbu’s ideals come from, it helps to explore his architectural philosophy. He was a leader in the modernist movement, and promoted functional, pure buildings. His philosophy is laid out in his “Five Points of a New Architecture:” 1.
Pilotis, or piles: Columns that support the a building’s mass, opening the ground underneath to free green space and allow for automobile movement.
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The free plan: The separation of load-bearing columns from internal walls, allowing free modification of the floor plan.
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The free façade: Similar to the free plan, the façade could be designed flexibly, since it had no structural function.
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The horizontal window: The free façade can be cut horizontally to light the whole space.
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The roof garden: Recover the sunlit green space lost beneath the building with a garden on the roof.
Villa Savoy, one of Le Corbusier’s most famous buildings and an exemplar of the Five Points of a New Architecture. Credit: By Valueyou (talk) – I created this work entirely by myself, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19648390.
His functionalist ideology also appeared in an emphasis on raw geometry and opposition to decoration of any sort, separating the architecture from any preexisting culture. In his view, a building must serve as a machine, built to fulfill its purpose in the most economical way possible. He wanted to bring the industrial revolution to architecture, mass-producing buildings, and later cities, like cars or light bulbs.
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Urban Design (Elective-3)- Utopian urban concepts of Le Corbusier
TERM PAPER
VILLE CONTEMPORAINE Le Corbusier’s first foray into urban planning was the Contemporary City (Ville Contemporaine), a universal concept for a city of 3 million. The plan was first presented at the Paris Salon d’Automne in 1922, and suggested a city of tomorrow based on “a theoretically water-tight formula to arrive at the fundamental principles of town planning” (Le Corbusier, 1929). This rational, uncompromising plan begins with an ideal site – level, open, and clear of buildings (which meant any attempt to build it would start with razing the previous city to the ground). From here, he plots a central business district of 24 identical glass skyscrapers on a 400-yard grid with broad park space between them. He thereby aims to increase density while decreasing congestion: 95 percent of this area would be open, and include various squares, restaurants and theaters. Each skyscraper includes a tube station, part of a complex transportation system comprised of as many as half a dozen layers of distinct types of traffic, including highways raised above the ground and a central aerodrome for air taxis. Walt Disney would echo many of these ideas decades later. Housing would be in similarly geometric low-rise buildings around this center, plus Garden Cities outside a protected ring of woods, fields and sporting grounds (reserved for expansion).
A sketch of the Contemporary City concept. Credit: Foundation Le Corbusier.
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Urban Design (Elective-3)- Utopian urban concepts of Le Corbusier
TERM PAPER
PLAN VOISIN The Contemporary City was not as widely accepted as Le Corbusier would have liked, and in 1925 he determined it was time to push the concept with a more concrete focus: Paris. What he called the Plan Voisin would have radically redeveloped central Paris. Although today the area is one of the city’s most architecturally important neighborhoods, in the 1920s it was in poor shape, with sanitation issues and overcrowding. Corbu proposed demolishing two square miles, preserving only a handful of the best architecture. He wanted to wipe out what he described as “a thousand different buildings … the beauty of ugliness … dingy and utterly discordant with one another,” condemning diversity in architecture. He recommended moving the current inhabitants (who he referred to as troglodytes) to new garden cities around Paris. To replace the neighborhood, he would build 18 skyscrapers plus low-rise government, cultural, and residential buildings in a large, open space. The plan also included multilevel transit along the lines of the Contemporary City and three-tiered glass pedestrian malls overlooking the parks. Corbu promised that this plan would increase land values by five times, greatly benefiting both the state and any investors he gathered. However, support for the demolition of central Paris was, unsurprisingly, hard to find, if for no other reason than the cost.
A model of Plan Voisin (Amber Case on Flickr), compared to the area as it appears today (Google Maps).
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Urban Design (Elective-3)- Utopian urban concepts of Le Corbusier
TERM PAPER
VILLE REDIEUSE (The Radiant City) The culmination of Le Corbusier’s plans is The Radiant City (Ville Radieuse), published in 1933. The complex, universal plan went into more detail on every piece of the city than any previous plot, with a special focus on life in the city and residential spaces. It also went beyond urban areas to propose restructuring of rural land into “Radiant Farms” and “Radiant Villages.” In The Radiant City, Corbu lays out the pieces of his doctrine, which he calls “definite principles and rules of conduct: •
“The Plan must rule.
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Disappearance of the street.
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Differentiation between simple and multiple speeds.
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What to do with LEISURE in the machine age; leisure could turn out to be the menace of modern times.
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The use of land in town and country.
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The dwelling unit considered as part of the public services.
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The green city.
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The civilization of the automobile replacing that of the railroad.
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Landscaping the countryside.
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The radiant city.
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The radiant countryside.
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The decline of money.
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The basic pleasures: satisfaction of psycho-physiological needs, collective participation and the freedom of the individual.
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The rebirth of the human body.” – (Le Corbusier, 1964)
One of the themes he continues to discuss throughout is individual liberty, which Corbu narrowly defines as happiness and freedom from unpleasant tasks. He insists that constructing the city will give “work to everyone in it, which means we shall be able to banish, to forbid all sterile, selfstrangling and stupid work.” He strives “to fill my modern man’s 24-hour day completely … make him a gift of personal liberty” (Le Corbusier, 1964). While he focuses on bringing sunlight, air, nature, and work to everyone, he also insists that almost anything outside his constricted view is wasteful or even dangerous. For example, when discussing women entering the workforce, he describes it as “female emancipation and freedom = ideal = illusion.”
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Urban Design (Elective-3)- Utopian urban concepts of Le Corbusier
The Radiant City is similarly puritanical. Employing geometric design and repetition, housing (a major difference between this and Corbu’s previous designs) is constrained at 14 square meters to a person. He compares the apartments directly to second-class train cabins, showing “the results of strictly observed economy.” The apartments are in long, geometric 14-story buildings, monotony he insists streets (again suspended in the air) on a differently spaced grid will disrupt.
TERM PAPER
A portion of the Radiant City. Note the geometric residential buildings. Credit: Le Corbusier 1964.
Still, Le Corbusier’s radical ideas faced rejection from the broader field, and he became more and more bitter. Although he would design several master plans, neighborhood housing projects, and even the entire city of Chandigarh, India and his ideas continue to influence modern architects and planners, the Radiant City never achieved the universality he believed it would. Ultimately, in trying to industrialize architecture and city building in the same way as the automobile, Le Corbusier failed to understand key elements of human nature. Mass-produced cars are acceptable because there is diversity between producers and models, so looking down a street you’re unlikely to see the same car twice. But a city built on his idealized forms lacks all the diversity that defines human existence.
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Urban Design (Elective-3)- Utopian urban concepts of Le Corbusier
TERM PAPER
CHANDIGARH One of the first chances Le Corbusier had to employ his ideas on a large scale came in 1947, almost 20 years after he first conceptualized the Radiant City.
The Assembly Building in Chandigarh, designed by 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3635869
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The state capital of Punjab, India, Chandigarh is perhaps the closest Le Corbusier got to a fully planned city in his lifetime. Corbu inherited an incomplete master plan from a pair of American architects, which followed a more traditional Garden City scheme requested by the local government. While somewhat constrained by this plan, he worked to adapt it to his more modern ideals. The resulting city wasn’t nearly a true Radiant City, as Corbu suffered compromise after compromise with the government and the other architects on the project. The most “radiant” aspect is the transportation system, a strict rectangular grid with an 8-tiered hierarchy from intercity “V1” arterials to “V7” pedestrian and “V8” bicycle paths.The grid of roadways bounded large Sectors (originally referred to as “Urban Villages” in the Mayer scheme), each of which featured a strip of greenspace along the north-south axis crossed with a commercial road running from east to west. The new layout compressed Mayer’s 6,908 acres down to 5,380 acres, increasing the density of the city by 20% while still essentially respecting the principles of the Garden City Movement. Although Le Corbusier’s original plan still survives at the heart of Chandigarh, the city’s current population— three times its planned occupancy—means the city has expanded beyond its planned boundaries
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Urban Design (Elective-3)- Utopian urban concepts of Le Corbusier
TERM PAPER
The inspiration for Le Corbusier’s master plan has been credited to a number of sources. Its emphasis on ample green space between its roads and buildings drew not only from the Garden City principles requested by the local government but from the architect’s own concept of the Ville Radieuse – albeit with the towering glass skyscrapers replaced by sculptures reflecting Chandigarh’s governmental purpose. Rather than razing one of the cities in his native Europe to craft his perfectly ordered urban paradise, Le Corbusier had the opportunity to utilize those same principles on the https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/58b1/11aa/e58e/ce4c/d100/03f4/slidesho untouched Punjabi countryside. w/copyright_laurianghinitoiu_Capitol_Complex_(33_of_51).jpg?1487999397 Curiously, Chandigarh’s system of grand boulevards with key focal points appears to have been derived from that of Paris, the metropolis which so disgusted Le Corbusier that he wished to demolish it in favor of his preferred urban scheme (itself Haussmanian in its vision). It is also likely that inspiration for these qualities came from the earlier plan for New Delhi, a more local example of comprehensive city planning aimed at the glorification of the state. Although the rest of the project team accepted it as an inevitability, Le Corbusier was never pleased with the categorization of housing into income levels and, in his disgust, withdrew from much of the project.While the Master Plan took form as Le Corbusier envisioned, he was never pleased with the housing that rose alongside his cherished grid. From the moment he took on the project, the architect intended to apply his Unité d'Habitation concept to Chandigarh, inserting residential highrises for the city’s government employees into the otherwise lowlying city; despite his efforts, however, the local government demurred, and the design of the residential units became the sole responsibility of Jeanneret, Fry, and Drew. Chandigarh Master Plan https://www.archdaily.com/806115/ad-classics-master-plan-for-chandigarh-lecorbusier/58b114f6e58ece4cd1000401-ad-classics-master-plan-for-chandigarh-le-corbusier-image
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Urban Design (Elective-3)- Utopian urban concepts of Le Corbusier
TERM PAPER
Due to the governmental function of the city, Le Corbusier forwent his massive glass skyscrapers in favor of lower lying governmental buildings in the Capital complex. However, he still hoped to employ Unité-style high rise apartments, until the local government balked and handed housing entirely off to the other architects. Corbu considered this a betrayal of his work, and went so far as to construct artificial hills between the Capitol complex and the rest of the city, saying “the city must never be seen.” The centerpiece of the complex, the Governor’s Palace, was deemed “undemocratic” by the government, and Corbu replaced it with a monument of an open hand, to symbolize both giving and receiving from the world.Chandigarh has since expanded and morphed into a distinctive contemporary city, but the community holds a special place in planning history as an example of a fully planned community that has proven itself a fully functional city.
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The Open Hand Monument in Chandigarh. Credit: By Lillottama – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51124833
Urban Design (Elective-3)- Utopian urban concepts of Le Corbusier
TERM PAPER
WORKS CITED https://www.archdaily.com/806115/ad-classics-master-plan-for-chandigarh-le-corbusier https://urbanutopias.net/2019/06/15/le-corbusiers-ideas-on-display/#more-406 https://urbanutopias.net/2019/06/01/le-corbusier/#:~:text=FrenchSwiss%20architect%20Le%20Corbusier%2C%20born%20Charles%C3%89douard%20Jeanneret%2C%20saw,cities%20with%20his%20concept%20of%20perfect%2C %20ordered%20environments. https://99percentinvisible.org/article/ville-radieuse-le-corbusiers-functionalist-plan-utopianradiant-city/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304028569_Le_Corbusier_the_city_and_the_modern_u topia_of_dwelling https://planningtheorypractice.wordpress.com/2018/02/05/urban-utopias-of-howard-wright-andle-corbusier/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304028569_Le_Corbusier_the_city_and_the_modern_u topia_of_dwelling https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier#:~:text=From%20Simple%20English%20Wikipedia% 2C%20the%20free%20encyclopedia%20Le,In%20the%201930s%2C%20he%20became%20a%20Fre nch%20citizen.
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